...“Credit card and bank records show that Martin spent more than $1
million at a strip club and restaurants, nearly $1 million at elite
hotels and another $1 million renting flight time on private jets,”
prosecutors said. “He purchased a fleet of luxury vehicles, donated
hundreds of thousands of dollars to celebrity charity events, and hired
personal security guards to accompany him in public.”...

...According to court documents made public, Cook purchased a Rolls
Royce Silver Spur, a Maserati Quattroporte, a Hummer H2, a Jaguar
S-Type, a Mercedes-Benz, a heavily customized Audi S8, a 60-foot
houseboat (complete with a brass stripper pole), an island in Canada and
a two-person submarine....

Paul Manafort Indicted for Laundering 50 Times as Much Through Rugs as Through Household Labor

One of the nifty things Robert Mueller did with his indictment
of Paul Manafort was to lay out all the extravagances he used to
launder his money into the US. The most amazing was his $1M antique rug
bill.

Mueller also listed $1.4 million laundered through two different clothing stores.
Compare that with the mere $20,000 Manafort spent on the people who clear his NY property.

Admittedly, Manafort appears to have redone his Hamptons and FL
properties routinely to launder more money. But it basically means he
shorted his staff while spending big on magic carpets.

Which will make Trump’s efforts to give rich shits like Manafort more tax benefits this week even more difficult.

The money laundering through luxury goods isn’t the key crime in
Manafort’s indictment. That has to do with serving as an unregistered
foreign agent with regards to work from 2012. Importantly, that means
Mueller got to point to Tony Podesta’s corruption prominently as one of
these two unnamed firms.

The allegation is that by having one Republican and one Democratic
lobbyist firm to do the work of pro-Russian Ukrainians, Manafort hid
what was really going on.

Just as interesting, Mueller slapped a false statements charge onto
the failure to report being a foreign agent, tied to these claims (they
carry onto a second page)....